Despite all the advances in software tools, there seem to be several enduring truths about software development. By understaning these 'laws', Ziv’s law, Humphrey’s Law and Conway’s Law for example, you can remove some of the mystery of the process. Al Noel discusses these and other laws that seem to apply generally to the art of programming. More »

Lets start discussing about this subject by closely looking at the term Redundancy. What is redundancy all about ?
Wikipedia defines redundancy as “In engineering, redundancy is the... More »

Editorial - Relying on Algorithms

We are increasingly living in a world that is affected by software (and the data it uses). I have to admit that I'm slightly worried about this as I look at the quality of software, the bugs, the lack of effective testing. It's not that companies don't perform a lot of testing; many do, but it seems that many developers, and even QA people, don't really know how to effectively test. This is especially true of testing for abnormal or unexpected situations. It there's one area of software development that seems woefully immature, it's testing.

However testing isn't the only problem. We might not like the way that software is designed, and used, to alter our world. As we become more dependent on software to accomplish tasks for us, we will run into new situations that the software may not have been designed to handle. This opinion piece on the ways in which software might alter our lives is both fascinating and scary. How do we want software to behave in unfamiliar situations? It's not an easy question to answer, and it's certainly not a question with a simple answer in many scenarios.

We learn to depend on systems when they work for us. Whether in business, government, or our personal lives, when a system works, we want to use it more. However that's not always the best long term solution. Humans adapt, and software, especially the systems using a constant stream of historical data for decisions, has flaws. More than a few of you might have encountered this type of situation with Netflix or Amazon recommendations when you have kids sharing your account.

In some sense I think that we not only need adaptive algorithms, that we can customize over time, but we also need to understand the data that flows through the algorithms. We need ways to remove some data from consideration by the software, when we find it is removing more value than it is adding.

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Securing SQL Server

Written by Denny Cherry, a Microsoft MVP for the SQL Server product, a Microsoft Certified Master for SQL Server 2008, and one of the biggest names in SQL Server today, Securing SQL Server, Second Edition explores the potential attack vectors someone can use to break into your SQL Server database as well as how to protect your database from these attacks. In this book, you will learn how to properly secure your database from both internal and external threats using best practices and specific tricks the author uses in his role as an independent consultant while working on some of the largest and most complex SQL Server installations in the world. This edition includes new chapters on Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Storage Area Network Security.

Explanation: Groups a selected set of rows into a set of summary rows by the values of one or more columns or expressions in SQL Server 2012. One row is returned for each group. Aggregate functions in the SELECT clause

which one is best query?
- first query
select COUNT(id) from tbl_birthmaster1 where status_info=1
and zone_id=1
select COUNT(id) from tbl_birthmaster1 where isnull(pdffilepath,'')!='' and status_info=1
and zone_id=1
select...

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